Americans are deeply divided by race over the killing of unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin, with 91 percent of African-Americans saying he was unjustly killed, while just 35 percent of whites thought so, a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed on Thursday.

Fifty-nine percent of Hispanics believe that Martin was unjustly killed six weeks ago, according to the online poll of 1,922 Americans, conducted Monday through Thursday….

The survey included 1,289 Caucasians, 219 African-Americans and 267 Hispanics. The precision of the Reuters/Ipsos online poll is measured using a credibility interval and this poll has a credibility interval of plus or minus 2.6 percentage points for all respondents….

The poll also showed a stark racial divide between whites and blacks over whether heavy media coverage of the case had been appropriate. A total of 68 percent of blacks surveyed said they thought the amount of media coverage had been appropriate, while only 24 percent of whites thought it was right.

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I’ve been going over this on a liberal forum since the media picked it up. Their outright blindness on the tribalism angle is amazing, further questioning has revealed that they do indeed live in a bubble. Quite literally, everyone or nearly everyone they knew or talk too considered Zimmerman guilty before so much as reading a police report or listening to the actual 9/11 calls.

They wouldn’t acknowledge that the racial issues exists as a divide even after the poll results came back, except only to categorize Zimmerman as being strictly White. Because he was in a position of authority as neighborhood watch in a “gated community”, even though he wasn’t on duty at the time, he is essentially “White”. They say that race is a social construct so that it can be redefined at will. They rally against racial profiling, then with the other hand commit it themselves at will. They celebrate the diversity of ideas so long as it exists along a narrow band of acceptable practice.

Just to extend the rant a little more, these are otherwise “ordinary” people who, when certain triggers are pressed, happily support the lynching of a man based off of a headline and a paragraph from media. This sort of thing causes problems.

The cluelessness of the Latinos and their passivity over virtual lynching of their co-ethnic by the media is the real news. Kinda supports RKU ‘s two favorite theses: media are instrumental (and evil) and Latinos are not aggressive.

P.S. I can’t see cursor in this comment field. Basically, impossible to edit.

@eric – “Their outright blindness on the tribalism angle is amazing, further questioning has revealed that they do indeed live in a bubble.”

to be a socially and morally acceptable person in the west nowadays means you have to be blind to group identities — especially re. any groups that are biologically based (sex, ethnicity, race, whatever). i’m sure you already know that, but it really is amazing how clueless people can make themselves when social acceptance is on the line. people really will believe ANYthing.

@nanonymous – “The cluelessness of the Latinos and their passivity over virtual lynching of their co-ethnic by the media is the real news. Kinda supports RKU ‘s two favorite theses … Latinos are not aggressive.”

yeah, that’s interesting.

a friend of mine is a teacher (in fact, several of my friends are teachers) and when she was getting her education degree, she received some multi-cultural training (of course). one of the more interesting things she was told was that hispanics (mexicans) are averse to raising their hands to answer questions because it would look like showing off and, at least when it comes to knowledge, mexicans don’t want to appear better than their fellows. another form of being passive — as a mexican, you’re required to stay with the group rather than be an independent individual.

unfortunately (or, rather, lucky for her!), my friend has not taught in any “vibrant” schools, so we never got confirmed whether this bit of info was accurate or not.

please, let’s try to at least be more informed than the typical NYT writer. Hispanic/Latino are not nationalities and they’re not synonyms for ‘mestizo’. They’re weasel words for Democrats to bring more poor brown people into their ‘rainbow coalition’ base, like “people of color”. In the real world Latin Americans are mostly nationalistic with longstanding national rivalries. Only a few leftist activists like La Raza really adhere to “Latino” identity. George Zimmerman is a Peruvian mestizo who was raised by (German Catholic?) White Americans. Why do you think a Mexican or Dominican would care bout him? He’s not from their nation, he’s not from their culture, the only things he has in common with them is religion and the fact that a few thousand Spaniards conquered all of their homelands in a couple of decades.

@bleach – “Why do you think a Mexican or Dominican would care bout him? He’s not from their nation, he’s not from their culture, the only things he has in common with them is religion and the fact that a few thousand Spaniards conquered all of their homelands in a couple of decades.”

true. but where are all the peruvian-americans then? why aren’t they making a big stink about all this? or maybe they are somewhere and i just haven’t heard about it.

@bleach: Your argument sounds plausible but fails real world test: “black” is not ethnicity/nationality either. Somalis have nothing to do with Nigerians who in turn are far from being the same as Haitians or descendants of slaves in the USA. Yet they all stick together as poor oppressed blacks. (Not a monolith, mind you, but something a lot more shaped than Latinos, a great majority of whom are mestizos).

The “Hispanic” category was invented under the Nixon Administration. I don’t know what
Nixon was up to, but this new “construct” gradually came under the leadership of the
post-60s anti-WASP coalition led by the Ford foundation, leftist Ashkenazim and the like.
They remain under that leadership to this day. “Hispanic” activism only has utility for the coalition as a whole when it can be used against the usually rather pathetic and impotent remnants of white conservatism. That’s why the dog isn’t barking.

Incidentally why was not even NYT capable of taking a dispassionate approach to the evidence, let alone ABC, CNN, and NBC. If I were a cynicalist knave or the devil incarnate I would be rubbing my hands together: “See here, my Pretty, how easy it is to rile and divide the rabble! They will never unite against us. “

“to be a socially and morally acceptable person in the west nowadays means you have to be blind to group identities — especially re. any groups that are biologically based (sex, ethnicity, race, whatever).”

Sailer’s theory is that this is all about status signaling but recently I’ve seen what looks like an even better theory related to Haidt’s idea that every sacred idea is surrounded by a halo of “motivated ignorance.” That led to this piece of research which talks about how taboos are protected by rituals of cleansing, etc. It’s not about status so much as belonging, about not getting kicked out of your peer group altogether. Fascinating stuff.

I am absolutely determined to get a link to that article by Tetlock and company. Here is the Sailer post. Scroll down to tetlock in the comments and click on the link. I’ve never had this problem before. What am I doing wrong?

@luke – “Sailer’s theory is that this is all about status signaling but recently I’ve seen what looks like an even better theory related to Haidt’s idea that every sacred idea is surrounded by a halo of ‘motivated ignorance.’ That led to this piece of research which talks about how taboos are protected by rituals of cleansing, etc. It’s not about status so much as belonging, about not getting kicked out of your peer group altogether.“

the two (haidt/tetlock’s ideas and steve’s idea) don’t have to be mutually exclusive. believing in Whatever Stupid Idea Is In Vogue (WSIIIV) might help you stay in the group — but if you can show that you believe in WSIIIV the most, then your status in the group could rise.

imagine if you’re the one that makes up or introduces the WSIIIV! then your status should rocket to rock star levels. (^_^)

these ideas make a lot of sense to me, ’cause from where i’m sitting, it looks like most people will believe ANYTHING as long as enough other people around them believe the same thing. hard to understand why that should be unless it has to do with something reproductively useful like group membership and/or status.

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